The volumes in the RINBE series are modeled upon the publications of the soon-to-be-completed Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) series, with a few minor modifications. Like the RINAP volumes, the books in this series are not intended to provide analytical or synthetic studies, but rather to provide basic text editions that can serve as the foundations for such studies. Thus, extensive discussions of the contents of the texts are not presented and the core of each volume is the edition of the relevant texts.
In this volume, the order of the texts is based for the most part upon the following two criteria:
Following the practice of the RINAP series, which was in turn modeled on the now-defunct Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia (RIM) series, inscriptions that cannot be assigned definitely to any particular ruler are assigned text numbers beginning at 1001. Certain other inscriptions, in particular, any text composed in the name of a ruler's family members (e.g., the king's mother) are given numbers that begin at 2001.
In the volumes of the RINBE series, the term "exemplar" is employed to designate a single inscription found on one object. The term "text" is employed to refer to an inscription that existed in antiquity and that may be represented by a number of more or less similar exemplars. In our editions, exemplars of one text are edited together as a "master text," with a single transliteration and translation. Variants to the "master text" are provided either on page (major variants) or at the back of the volume (minor variants).
Each text edition is typically supplied with a brief introduction containing general information. This is followed by a catalogue containing basic information about all exemplars. This includes museum and excavation numbers (the symbol + is added between fragments that belong to the same object), provenance, lines preserved, and an indication of whether or not the inscription has been collated: c = collated from the original, (c) = partially collated from the original, p = collated from a photograph, (p) = partially collated from a photograph; and n = not collated. The next section is typically a commentary containing further technical information and notes. The bibliography then follows. Items are arranged chronologically, earliest to latest, with notes in parentheses after each bibliographic entry. These notes indicate the exemplars with which the item is concerned and the nature of the publication, using the following keywords: photo, copy, edition, translation, study, and provenance. Certain standard reference works (e.g., the various volumes of "Keilschriftbibliographie" and "Register Assyriologie" published in the journals Orientalia and Archiv für Orientforschung respectively; Borger, HKL 1–3; AHw; CAD; and Seux, ERAS) are not normally cited, although they were essential in the collecting and editing of these texts. While the bibliographies aim at featuring all major relevant items, they cannot be considered exhaustive, as a vast amount of scattered literature exists on many of the inscriptions edited in this volume, with much of this literature of only limited interest for this volume's aim of providing authoritative text editions.
As noted earlier, a distinction is made between major and minor variants to a "master text"; the major variants are placed at the bottom of the page and the minor variants at the back of the book. In brief, major variants are essentially non-orthographic in nature, while minor variants are orthographic variations. Orthographic variants of proper names may at times be significant and thus on occasion these will also appear on the page as major variants. Complete transliterations of all exemplars in the style of musical scores are found in a PDF available on the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (Oracc) platform at http://oracc.org/ribo/ scores/. Thus, readers who find the notes on variants insufficient for their needs are encouraged to consult the full reading of any exemplar; such scores, however, are not normally given for brick inscriptions. Objects whose attribution to a particular text is not entirely certain are given exemplar numbers that are followed by an asterisk (*). Moreover, these exemplars are listed in separate catalogues (Likely Additional Exemplars), beneath the main catalogue.
Several photographs are included in this volume. These are intended to show a few of the object types bearing inscriptions of the three kings whose texts are edited in this volume and to aid the reader in appreciating the current state of preservation of some of the inscriptions.
As is normal practice for transliterating cuneiform inscriptions, lower case Roman script is used for Sumerian and lower case italics for Akkadian; logograms in Akkadian texts appear in capitals. The system of sign values in Borger, Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon, is generally followed. Italics in the English translation indicate either an uncertain translation or a word in the original, Akkadian language. In general, the rendering of names follows standard modern English translations; for example, Amēl-Marduk (rather than Amīl-Marduk or Evil-Merodach), Belshazzar (and not Bēl-šarru-uṣur), Lâbâši-Marduk (instead of Lā-abâš-Marduk), Nabonidus (rather than Nabû-naʾid), and Neriglissar (instead of Nergal-šarru-uṣur). As for the translations of ceremonial names of temples and other buildings given in the present volume - for example, Eurmeiminanki ("House which Gathers the Seven Mes of Heaven and Netherworld"), the ziggurat of the god Nabû at Borsippa - these generally follow George, House Most High (for bibliographical abbreviations, see pp. xxiv–xxxii).
There are several differences between the RIM and RINBE styles; the latter follows that of RINAP. Among these, the most notable is that all partially preserved or damaged signs, regardless of how they are broken, appear between half brackets (⸢ and ⸣), following the model of the Oracc platform. Thus, no partially preserved sign has square brackets ([ and ]) inserted in its transliteration; for example, [DINGI]R and LUGA[L KU]R appear in the transliteration as ⸢DINGIR⸣ and ⸢LUGAL KUR⸣ respectively. This change was made to ensure compatibility of the online RINBE editions with the standards of Oracc, the parent site and project where the LMU-Munich-based Royal Inscriptions of Babylonia online (RIBo) Project, to which RINBE belongs, is housed. This change was implemented in the print version in order to present identical editions in RINBE 2 and on RIBo, in particular, in its "Babylon 7" sub-project. Note, however, that the translations may appear more damaged than their corresponding transliterations indicate, as the translations were prepared according to standard Assyriological practices; for example, ⸢DINGIR⸣ (= [DINGI]R) and ⸢LUGAL KUR⸣ (= LUGA[L KU]R) are translated as "[the go]d" and "king [of the lan]d," and not "the god" and "king of the land."
The bibliographical abbreviations, other abbreviations, and object signatures, whenever possible, follow RIM and RINAP in the print series; e.g., BE is used for prefix of excavation numbers from the German excavations at Babylon rather than Bab, the preferred siglum of some current Assyriological projects and scholars. In general, the museum, collection, and excavation numbers differ slightly in format from the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) in the printed volumes; e.g., the "Babylon Stele" of Nabonidus (Nbn. 3) appears as EŞ 1327 in this volume, but as Ist EŞEM 01327 on CDLI. However, on RIBo, in both its informational pages and its downloadable catalogue, the format of RINBE's museum, collection, and excavation numbers follows that of CDLI, thereby facilitating better metadata exchange between RINBE and CDLI and easier cross-platform searching of the two projects' catalogues.
In addition to the indices of museum and excavation numbers and selected publications found in RIM volumes, the RINBE volumes also contain indices of proper names (personal names, topographical names, and divine names). Searchable online versions of the manuscripts are maintained on Oracc by the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI). Web versions of the editions are also hosted on CDLI.
Munich April 2020
Jamie Novotny
Editor-in-Chief
Jamie Novotny
Jamie Novotny, 'Editorial Notes ', RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, The RIBo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2022 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/ribo/babylon7/rinbe2frontmatter/editorialnotes/]